A BookPage Garland

Well, the kids are back in school, so for me that means fall.  Even if it's not!  So, I decided to haul all of my fall items out of storage.  In rearranging my mantle a bit, I decided I wanted something a little different.  So, to the blog'o'sphere I ventured.  

I found this cute little garland at Shabby Creek Cottage.

So I decided to duplicate it with what I had.  I literally started this as my kids were finishing up breakfast this morning, before school.  I finished about 30 minutes after the last child was out the door... maybe less than an hour total (with some distractions in the middle).  So, it was a really quick and easy project.  

First I assembled the massive amount of materials.  Yes... one old book, one pair of scissors, one ink pad, and one stapler (fully loaded!)  That's it.  

I think this project only used about 200 pages.  I'm only guessing on this since I really didn't count!

I began by ripping pages out of an old dilapidated book.  You'll see photos of Bible characters and Biblical names in my photos, but I want to assure you I did not rip up a Bible.  My son was mortified when he thought I was doing that.  :)  I had found this old children's Christian devotion book in my basement.  It was missing pages and in pretty bad condition over all, so I've been using it several times for "book page" crafts over the last year.  It's neat in that the pictures and Biblical names show up in the crafts, and it's a good reminder of what's important.

After pulling out the pages, I did trim the ripped edge to make a straight line.  The glue was gloppy in this book, and it made for really scraggly (is that a word?) edges.  After I cut the pages straight, I fanned them out and rubbed a Distress Ink pad along the edges... all four edges, both sides.  Because of the fanning job, some pages got more ink than others, but that was fine with me.

Then came the construction process.  I would make a mini "fan" out of each page... just two folds, so there were three segments.  I pinched the middle and folded it in half.  (NOT creasing any other area, so that I could keep the fullness.)

Here is a photo of the folded page.

Then I would staple the bottom at the crease to keep it together.  I continue doing this, only each time, I would staple it to the previous page.  

In this photo, I DID crease the pages, simply for photography's sake so that you could see how the pages aligned and were stapled.

Here are those pages, refluffed.

As the paper chain continued, it started looking like a ruffled garland, but only about 1/4 "full".

So I made a second strip and then stapled it to the other strip (stapled sides together).  It made a VERY full ruffle, as you can see above.

Here's a photo of my two garlands, before stapling the edges together.

The garland is exactly the length of my mantle, and it works really well to fill in the mantle area below the TV.  We can never put anything "flame-y" or tall on the middle of the mantle, so I like how the garland fills it in.

Here's my close up.  I think I need a few more crows for the mantle to fill in with a little more contrast.  

The garland goes well with my book-page wreath...

and my book-page pumpkins, too.